For the first time in a long time, the Saugerties Central School District (SCSD) is reevaluating its mission statement and goals. Dubbed a “Blueprint for Excellence,” the plan will be rolled out during the 2024-25 school year.
Just days after the Blueprint for Excellence was unanimously adopted by the board of education, district superintendent Dan Erceg walked Hudson Valley One through the essentials of a plan intended to address the SCSD’s commitment to “continuous growth and improvement.”
“It has been a number of years since Saugerties revisited its mission statement and its goals,” Erceg said. “And with all that we’ve done through the past couple of years, I thought it would be good to make sure that we update to reflect what our community values.”
The Blueprint for Excellence was shaped in part after a chance meeting between Erceg and Kevin McGowan, longtime superintendent of the Brighton Central School District, located in Monroe County in northwestern NY.
“I met him at a conference and I had some follow-up conversations with him and spoke to some other schools that he had worked with,” Erceg said. “We chose to use his process for this.”
Brighton’s four-year graduation rate is consistently around 95 percent, and though Saugerties isn’t far behind, most recently graduating 91 percent of its four-year cohort, the district would like to do even better. To help move the SCSD in the right direction, it was felt that a voice from outside the district would be helpful.
“One of the important things was having a neutral person come in and be able to steer and provide a general perspective more than just from Saugerties,” Erceg said.
In an effort to involve as many in the community as possible, the process included a community night and other meetings involving school board members, with feedback reviewed by stakeholder representatives to clearly define the district’s mission, vision and core values. The process then moved into creating an action plan that will be transparent and focused, with accountability included.
It began with gathering community feedback in January of this year, then developing the plan and assembling a community team in February. Action plans were developed from March through May, and then revisions and review were completed by the leadership team, and implementation was underway. Erceg said spreading out the process over a long period of time was conducive to expanding community involvement, as well as being able to dig deeper into what the Blueprint for Success was really all about.
“In the past, I participated in a strategic plan and it was a three-day retreat,” Erceg said. “I just feel recently people don’t have the bandwidth to commit to three days in a row. Especially for those folks that are working and so forth. I thought that this approach kind of balanced getting that participation with people’s available time.”
In the end, the district settled on core beliefs like the educational value of solution-focused challenges, integrity, empathy and compassion, belonging and ownership, an equitable environment where all students have access to resources and support integral to their success, and encouraging collaboration.
“With this plan, we went a lot further than in the past,” Erceg said.
The Blueprint for Excellence is broken into four priority areas and goals.
• Provide all students with an individually challenging academic experience that develops skills and aligns to the district’s “Portrait of a Graduate,” which also aligns to state standards.
“I think the most important thing to do is develop that portrait of a graduate,” Erceg said. “What skills do we want our graduates to have?”
• Increase family and community engagement.
• Create, foster, and nurture a “superior quality” professional learning environment for staff geared toward ensuring student success.
• Create an environment where all students feel welcomed and supported.
Each of the four priority areas includes an implementation timeline over the next year which includes steps, training and responsibilities. But a critical component of the Blueprint for Excellence, Erceg said, is that it doesn’t just apply to students in the district in 2024-25: It must be malleable and open to changes over time.
“This is something that the state of education has to have for a student to succeed in the global world,” Erceg said. “We’re looking at what skills we need to who’s in kindergarten now, is going to be graduating when, 2037? That’s a world we don’t know yet, and there’s going to be some changes in what qualities and skills our graduates will need.”
The Blueprint for Success also includes an accountability timeline, which through October means unpacking and sharing the plan with staff, followed by smaller group meetings for more granular review. The district is planning quarterly updates for the community, both on how the implementation is going and what it’s doing for student achievement.
One key to ensuring the Blueprint for Success is, well, a success, is to buck prior mission statement trends and treat the program like a living, breathing organism that needs constant review and updates to work. A final report on year one of the Blueprint for Success will occur in June 2025, with a planning day held the following month to consider updates for 2025-26.
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